Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

It’s been a rough year for the Secret Service. After a series of security breaches led to director Julia Pearson’s resignation, the agency tasked with protecting the President and the White House continues to make some not-so-flattering blunders. Exhibit A: two senior Secret Service agents allegedly crashed into a White House barricade while inebriated last week.

And now, the agency says they’ve erased the surveillance tape of the alleged incident, as is policy. Yeah, OK.

CBS News reports that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, watched two surveillance videos that offered “limited views” of the alleged incident. But in a “closed-door discussion” with director Joseph Clancy yesterday, he was told that the it’s regular Secret Service policy to destroy all surveillance tapes around the White House after 72 hours.

Chaffetz, like most of us, was in awe that they would destroy a tape of two of their senior officials drunkenly crashing into a barricade. From CBS News:

“I don’t think anyone in that room could believe it,” Chaffetz told CBS. “That’s just a stunning revelation that 72 hours after they make a tape they destroy it? That doesn’t make any sense to us.”

He added, “If it’s regular policy to destroy them after 72 hours, why did they have two of the tapes, and where are the rest of the tapes? And so far the Secret Service has not been able to answer the question.”

In awe, yes, but unbelievable? This is the government we’re talking about, after all.